Well it’s not at all clear. Black Friday in 2011 resulted in the closure of one of the largest online poker sites in the world – Full Tilt Poker.

Finding a online poker site in the US

Well what poker sites accept US players and why or how? Since Full Tilt’s closure there has been a huge shift towards American ‘accepting’ poker sites like Carbon poker, so how is Carbon poker still operating?

The poker sites that are still operating are located outside of the US and therefore face different legal obligations. The security of American player accepting sites like these is in some doubt and depositing or playing online poker from anywhere in the US must be done at your own risk. Players have lost millions of dollars following black friday last year – play poker from America at your own risk!

What is a Bridging Loan

The clue is in the name, bridging loans literally bridge the gap in your finances. These types of loans are almost always repaid within a 12 month period as the high interest rates make further borrowing too expensive. However the more savvy individual will use a bridging loan to make a profitable investment that requires fast extra cash. For example a bridging loan may be used to purchase an under-valued asset when their current finances couldn’t afford such an investment – this may result in a rapid return on investment which heavily outweighs the high interest rate.

Bridging loans should rarely be used to cover debt as a strong and secure financial plan is required to avoid heavy repayment costs.

How much can you borrow with a bridging loan?

Bridging loans typically range from £30,000 to anything as high as £10,000,000. Of course large bridging loans require financial security to ensure repayments are made.

So why did we buy an iPad 2?

It wasn’t far into 2011 when Microvision released an iPad compatible projector that was successful enough to grab our attention. Not long after the initial release was a second generation created and this one had us drooling. With full iPad compatibility, the SHOWWX+ iPad projector was a must-see piece of tech. Within days we had grabbed one and began testing it out on the iPad we had shunned not so long before.

The projector was impressive – it could project your image from the small 7″ iPad screen onto a wall with over 100″ display. Presentations could be watched by everyone, not just the person you were talking to – and demonstrations, video and web content was so much easier to share. Not only this, but the iPad projector is about the same size as an iPhone making it ultra portable.

Finally for us, the iPad had a purpose in business. We could take it to a networking group and display it as 15″-20″ to a small group of people (and yes it works well in dim-normal light) or hold a meeting at the office and display it to everyone. The portability is what sets this projector apart from all over iPad projectors – sure the new HDMI capabilities of the iPad mean that you can plug in almost any modern projector unit, but most of these units aren’t at all portable.

Since then, there has been a long line of iPad projectors and the success is looking to continue right into 2012. If you are part of a business and you’re not sure about an iPad, think of how much more it can achieve with an iPad projector.

So how do you look to recover debt if you’ve not tied anyone into a contract?

Well there are a number of avenues that you can take, debt recovery solicitors, agencies or even just going straight to the courts. Because agencies and courts can be very costly, we’re going to look at the more popular option – consulting a solicitor.

A debt solicitor is useful because:

1. They have a full understanding of the processes required to recover debt
2. They have the legal knowledge to write letters threatening extensive legal action
3. They are priced very competitively and often help settle issues outside of court

If you are interested in reading more about how debt solicitors can help you and the stepped approach that debt recovery requires, please read it here: http://www.debtsolicitors.co.uk or at the UK Government’s managing debt website.

The Mathematics of Selling Shares

If you were to buy £1,000.00 of shares in a single company and the share price increased by 10%, your shares would now be worth £1,100.00. Now if you imagine that the share price then went up again by 10% the next day but crashed by 20% the following day, you may think that you have broken even. Let’s take a look at the maths:

Initial Investment: £1,000.00
Day 1: £1,100.00
Day 2: £1,210.00
Day 3: £968.00

From this series of events you have incurred a net loss. The principle behind this is a very strong one. For every decrease in share price, there is a greater increase required to break even. Let’s take a look at a simpler example starting with your initial investment of £1,000.00:

Initial Investment: £1,000.00
Day 1: £900.00
Day 2: £1000.00

On day 1 your share price fell by 10%. On day 2 your share price broke even. However the required % increase to break even was 11.11%. Whenever you’re looking to invest in shares you must be aware that selling shares at a profit becomes more difficult with every lost percentile.

Guest post from Robert Hounslow of SellingShares.org.uk

Rallying Gold Prices tied to Financial Collapse

Gold prices are fuelled by speculation and are heavily dependent on demand side economics. When a country’s (or in this case, a continent’s) economy is expected to take a hard knock, people rush to swap their fiat currency for something more stable. This could be converting Euros into Dollars or Dollars into Yen, but more common is the purchase of gold. Gold, unlike any fiat currency, is tried and tested and has been used in trade for centuries without coming unstuck. The security of gold is proven and it’s extremely liquid, making the demand for gold in economic recessions very, very high.

Where is the Gold Price Headed?

While the Eurozone is in the middle of a debt crisis that could force Greece into dropping the Euro altogether, the US is also faced with the possibility of defaulting on their debt. America has hit a debt ceiling that, if not raised by Congress, could cripple the US economy and the dollar. If Congress were to do the unthinkable and reject the move to increase the debt ceiling, the gold price will shoot up yet again as ‘capital flight’ takes hold. The dollar would be virtually abandoned by investors as it became more unstable than ever.
The continued Eurozone crisis and the problems that Italy are expected to bring to the Euro wil be likely to continue driving gold prices higher and higher over the next few months. While Italy looks to be the latest addition to the Eurozone crisis, the European fallout is by no means over as more underlying issues in other European countries have yet to rear their head.

This article was provided by GoldPrices.org.uk and the gold price calculator below was provided by Free Scrap Gold Calculator and Cash for Gold Calculator

NEUQs is a very versatile help desk software solution that can be adapted for use in many industries and sectors. Call details can be recorded very quickly using this system and it is therefore favoured by many call centre operators. These details are then sent to the relevant department and teams for further action to be carried out where necessary. The operator can prioritise the calls so that when the details are sent to the relevant people they can carry out the jobs in order of importance.

The NEUQs software tracks the whole process from the moment the call is taken right through until the case is closed. This has a number of benefits. Firstly, those dealing with the problem can see exactly what has been done prior to their involvement. Secondly, people at a management level can review the response times and actions of their staff.

Their slogan is ‘Listen.Think.Create.Deliver’ and they really do these things to a very high standard. Every business owner wants to know that their ideas are being listened to and when it comes to something like branding the owner really does know their business best. Hullaballoo are fantastic at taking your ideas and turning them into a workable and fantastic looking reality. Whether it’s brochure design or anything else design related, they add their experience and creativity into the mix and the results are always punctual and visually stunning.

Once you’re branding is finished you will need to begin to promote it. Hullaballoo can help you with all of your direct mail and e-mail marketing needs and get you off to a flying start or put the wind back into your business sails or should that be sales?

They have worked with a number of large companies such as Timberland, B&Q, Sainsbury’s and Connexions and are therefore the ideal solution for your all of your design and print needs.

Three of the largest online poker businesses were indicted with allegations of fraud. This wasn’t a typical case of fraud – the sums of money that were claimed to be fraudulent went beyond $3,000,000,000. So what happened, why did it happen, and what warnings does it spell?

US Poker Legislation

Online poker has been banned in the US for the past several years. In the land of the free, people are unable to make the choice to gamble small or large sums of money on internet poker. Of course the demand for online poker meant that legislation was futile and whilst entirely illegal, US citizens continued to gamble through online poker rooms. The three largest online poker rooms that ‘allowed’ US players were PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and the Cereus Network.

Fraudulent Poker Rooms

US players knew that online poker was banned by federal law. The issue was discussed in poker forums across the world and it was often dismissed as a real issue. That was, of course, until the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) looked into the problem. It turned out that the largest poker rooms in the world were allowing US players to deposit in their online poker accounts by tricking the banks into thinking that these players were paying for clothing, gardening equipment and other irrelevant items. By fooling the banks into accepting these illegal transactions, PokerStars and co were able to accept US deposits and cater for the huge American poker market.

It emerged that a poker entrepreneur who had previously been sentenced to prison for over 70 years was put on bail after ‘ratting’ out the fraud committed by these online poker sites.

A Warning to the Business World

When businesses are dealing with billions of dollars it is easy to get caught up in the hype. Online poker has been banned in the US for several years and it was inevitable that the websites who openly catered for these US players would be unstuck. Businesses should seriously consider their long terms goals – as with the financial crisis, it is no longer acceptable for companies to make short term gains at the expense of others. Businesses will get found out eventually.

You can read more about the reaction to poker’s black Friday here.

Social Media and SEO are intrinsically connected and it is actually now quite hard to be successful with one without any kind of input from the other. If I want to have a successful social media campaign and build an active online community online then I need to capture targeted traffic, and where am I going to do that if I have no presence on the search engines?

From the other angle the overlap is even more compelling. Of course everything surround the impact of social media on SEO is ultimately speculative. However, there is widespread consensus (a rare achievement for the SEO community) that social integration and social approval can have a very positive impact on rankings. In particular studies involving Twitter have been carried out that suggested Twitter links have at least as much value as traditional article and blog based links.

LinkedIn Company Profiles are another example of this trend. For example, if I provide SEO in the Leicester area in the UK, then I am up against all the other Leicester Search Engine Optimisation Companies. Google of course wants to provide users with the results from the company that is genuinely the best provider of that service in the Leicestershire areas, then two key factors are the social approval amongst the business community, and whether or not each competing business has a real world, offline presence.

LinkedIn Company profiles achieve this and therefore it makes perfect sense that it would be considered as part of the algorithm.